Deep space engineer and tech innovator Mary Spio grew up in Ghana and was 16 when her parents saved up enough money to send her to the United States. Her first job was at a McDonald's. Since then, she has served in the Air Force and created content and technologies for global titans such as Boeing, Lucas Films, Universal Music, Miami Children's Hospital, and Microsoft Xbox. Today, she is the head of CEEK VR, a developer of innovative content solutions and tools for distributing virtual-reality and augmented-reality experiences. Spio is also the author of It's Not Rocket Science: 7 Game-Changing Traits for Achieving Uncommon Success, in which she shares inspirational stories to spur readers to move beyond their comfort zones into creating impact and significance.

As a young girl growing up in Ghana, Mary Spio dreamed of escaping into another world. Watching TV, she saw astronauts walking on the moon, rockets launching, and acrobats on the other side of the world and would wonder what it felt like to be in their shoes. This state of wonder and curiosity led her to the United States, where her work as a deep space scientist and satellite engineer eventually led her to found CEEK VR, a social VR hub for accessing entertainment, education, and branded experiences. She describes VR as the next evolution of the Web, a series of interconnected 3D spaces where you can enter environments and have experiences that you couldn’t have in traditional 2D video. She also sees VR as “a delivery mechanism for compassion,” able to place people in experiences in which they can experience other people’s pain, learn from it, and ultimately open their minds to unimagined possibilities.